Thought that it would be nice if I could make a thread regarding help for all the stuff I'm working on so I don't have to open 23,167 threads.

Starting with the first question:

LPS, I examined your Vortex Rikers remake and your kismet stuff, but I couldn't find anything related to the music. How can I toggle it and define transitions? I have made something but it doesn't work, tutorials kept confusing me even more.

The second question is:

Is there any way to gib ragdolls you placed manually in a map? A console command or something of that kind? I need to make some corpses explode.

Also, the most important question I have atm is:Blocking Volumes. In UT3 they have the option "Use as Occluder" enabled, I guess this was just a mistake and they forgot to disable it, no? Doesn't this have impact on the performance of your level/map and if so, would it make a change to disable it? On another side-note: The problem with small static meshes being set as occluders per default, I guess disabling them would increase performance drastically if they don't cover up a whole wall for example and the wall serves as a occluder anyway.

* no, that will not effect performance, unless you have really complex BV's and lots of them.

small static mesh

* i have never noticed this as a 'problem', or even noticed this default setting.

- The best performance increase you can get on mesh is to simplify collision.

[normally using in editor BV's, but also can be done in a 3d model tool prior to export [with the .UCX extension]]

- i tend to set important mesh [to block trim/ or to cover a bad texture seam], to also be loaded.- also usually some items in the distance [backdrop/ background and additional environemnetal assets like trees]

- all mesh should be set to there own "Cull Distance" for performance, but try to avoid popping [unless used like i did; for example; to indicate an event or item at close range- [aggressive culling]- see DM-Scraperlobby for an example]

- using the Cull Distance volume

* a good tool to cover large areas [the whole map];

* you can set small mesh to a low value; and larger mesh to a larger value - test and tweak+ the individual adjustments you can make like aforementioned.

- changing Staic mesh collsiion to simple BV's

^^ self explanatory- using your brush

- tbh; performance is probably not an issue; im guessing you running some nice pc, but if you wish, i have an old single core with a 9800gt that i have used in the apst, to test "performance for low end users"/ but nowadys its a bit irrelelevant.

- it is also difficult to judge how much performance enhancements are required without futher information or images.

Here's something I made which works well for levels like Vortex Rikers where the music is only one piece and it has a delayed start:

The music will fade to silence in the above example. Nothing is wired to the target node because the sound is declared in the Play Sound properties window where you can also set the fadeout time. The other thing I had to do was set up the music in the soundcue editor so it wires into a looping module before connecting to the speaker.

For levels that have peace and combat I needed something a little more complex and came up with this:

The 'intro' cues are not looped in the soundcue editor, looped ones are. The transitions work perfectly, the only issue I'm having is making the music play immediately when the level starts. For now I've had to use a 3 second delay because of the player spawn and weapon sounds muting any other sound that tries to play while they are, but if I find a fix for that I'll post a new schematic.

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for your opinion and help guys! You two will definitely be credited for the kind help.

The only question that I struggle with now is the ragdoll gibbing, apparently I have to delete the ragdoll through Kismet and spawn gib chunks where it was... hm, either I'm dumb/blind or there is no delete function in Kismet.